Wilhelm von Kaulbach was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

, noted mainly as a muralist, but also as a book illustrator. His murals decorate buildings in Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

.

Education

His father combined painting and engraving with the goldsmith's trade. The family was so poor that he and his sister were glad to accept even stale bread from the peasantry in exchange for the father's engravings. This is said to have suggested to him his earliest work, “The Fall of Manna in the Wilderness.” But means were found to place Wilhelm, a youth of seventeen, in the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts, to which the sculptor Rauch

Christian Daniel Rauch

Christian Daniel Rauch was a German sculptor. He founded the Berlin school of sculpture, and was the foremost German sculptor of the 19th century.-Biography:Rauch was born at Arolsen in the Principality of Waldeck...

 had obtained him admission. The academy was then becoming renowned under the directorship of Peter von Cornelius

Peter von Cornelius

Peter von Cornelius was a German painter.Cornelius was born in Düsseldorf.His father, who was inspector of the Düsseldorf gallery, died in 1799, and the young Cornelius was stimulated to extraordinary exertions...

, of whom he became a distinguished pupil. Young Kaulbach contended against hardships, even hunger. But his courage never failed; and, uniting genius with industry, he was ere long foremost among the young national party which sought to revive the arts of Germany.

Munich murals

The ambitious work by which Louis I

Ludwig I of Bavaria

Ludwig I was a German king of Bavaria from 1825 until the 1848 revolutions in the German states.-Crown prince:...

 sought to transform Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 into a German Athens afforded the young painter an appropriate sphere. Cornelius had been commissioned to execute the enormous frescoes in the Glyptothek

Glyptothek

The Glyptothek is a museum in Munich, Germany, which was commissioned by the Bavarian King Ludwig I to house his collection of Greek and Roman sculptures . It was designed by Leo von Klenze in the Neoclassical style, and built from 1816 to 1830...

, and his custom was in the winters, with the aid of Kaulbach and others, to complete the cartoons at Düsseldorf, and in the summers, accompanied by his best scholars, to carry out the designs in colour on the museum walls in Munich. In 1824 Cornelius became director of the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Kaulbach, not yet twenty, followed, took up his permanent residence in Munich, labored hard on the public works, executed independent commissions, and in 1849, when Cornelius left for Berlin, succeeded to the directorship of the academy, an office which he held till his death.

Kaulbach matured, after the example of the masters of the Middle Ages, the practice of mural or monumental decoration; he once more conjoined painting with architecture, and displayed a creative fertility and readiness of resource scarcely found since the era of Raphael and Michelangelo

Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...

. Under the direction of Cornelius, he designed (1825-28) many frescoes for the new buildings at Munich, including “Apollo and the Muses,” for the ceiling of the Odeon; designs from Klopstock

Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock

Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock was a German poet.-Biography:Klopstock was born at Quedlinburg, the eldest son of a lawyer.Both in his birthplace and on the estate of Friedeburg on the Saale, which his father later rented, young Klopstock passed a happy childhood; and more attention having been given...

's “Battle of Hermann,” and from Goethe's and Wieland

Christoph Martin Wieland

Christoph Martin Wieland was a German poet and writer.- Biography :He was born at Oberholzheim , which then belonged to the Free Imperial City of Biberach an der Riss in the south-east of the modern-day state of Baden-Württemberg...

's poems, for the royal palace; purely classical illustrations of the story of Amor and Psyche, for the palace of Duke Max; and many allegorical figures for the arcades of the palace garden.

Early in the series of his multitudinous works came the famous “Narrenhaus,” the appalling memories of a certain madhouse near Düsseldorf; the composition all the more deserves mention for points of contact with Hogarth

Hogarth

-People:* Burne Hogarth, American cartoonist, illustrator, educator and author* David George Hogarth, English archaeologist* Donald Hogarth, Canadian politician and mining financier* Paul Hogarth, English painter and illustrator...

. Somewhat to the same category belong the illustrations to Reineke Fuchs. After “Narrenhaus,” his next great work, the “Battle of the Huns,” or “Spectre Battle,” representing the legend of the continued combat in mid-air between the spirits of the Huns and of Romans who had fallen before the walls of Rome, exhibited on the largest scale his talent for the symbolical and allegorical. Count Raczynski commissioned him to paint the work in sepia, and he finished it in 1837. The king of Saxony now offered him the direction of the academy of Dresden, with a salary of 2,000 thalers; but Kaulbach preferred to remain in Munich, although he received only 800 florins from the king of Bavaria.

These works, together with occasional figures or passages in complex pictorial dramas, show how dominant and irrepressible were the artists sense of satire and enjoyment of fun; character in its breadth and sharpness is depicted with keenest relish, and at times the sardonic smile bursts into the loudest laugh. Thus occasionally the grotesque degenerates into the vulgar, the grand into the ridiculous, as in the satire on “The Pigtail Age,” a fresco outside the New Pinakothek.
Yet these exceptional extravagances came not of weakness but from excess of power. Kaulbach tried hard to become Grecian and Italian; but he never reached Phidias

Phidias

Phidias or the great Pheidias , was a Greek sculptor, painter and architect, who lived in the 5th century BC, and is commonly regarded as one of the greatest of all sculptors of Classical Greece: Phidias' Statue of Zeus at Olympia was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World...

 or Raphael; in short the blood of Dürer

Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...

, Holbein and Martin Schöngauer

Martin Schongauer

Martin Schongauer was a German engraver and painter. He was the most important German printmaker before Albrecht Dürer....

 ran strong in his veins. The art products in Munich during the middle of the 19th century were of a quantity to preclude first-rate quality, and Kaulbach contracted a fatal facility in covering wall and canvas by the acre.

History of Mankind

Having hitherto worked almost exclusively in fresco, he spent some time in Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 and a year in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 to prepare himself for painting the cartoon in oil for the new Pinakothek, completing it in 1846. About the same time he commenced his famous designs illustrative of the history of mankind for the new museum at Berlin, which were executed by his pupils and completed in 1860. They consist of six frescoes, representing the “Tower of Babel,” “Homer and the Greeks,” the “Destruction of Jerusalem,” the “Battle of the Huns” ( – a painting that inspired the 1857 symphonic poem

Symphonic poem

A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music in a single continuous section in which the content of a poem, a story or novel, a painting, a landscape or another source is illustrated or evoked. The term was first applied by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt to his 13 works in this vein...

 Hunnenschlacht

Hunnenschlacht (Liszt)

Hunnenschlacht , S.105, is a symphonic poem by Franz Liszt, written in 1857 after a painting of the same name by Wilhelm von Kaulbach.The painting depicts the battle of the Catalaunian Fields in 451 AD, where the Hun armies led by Attila fought a savage battle against a Roman coalition led by Roman...

 by Liszt

Liszt

Liszt is a Hungarian surname. Notable persons with that surname include:* Franz Liszt , Hungarian composer and pianist* Adam Liszt , father of Franz Liszt* Anna Liszt , mother of Franz Liszt...

), the “Crusaders at the gates of Jerusalem,” and the “Age of the Reformation.”

These major tableaux, severally 30 feet long, and each comprising over one hundred figures above life-size, are surrounded by minor compositions making more than twenty in all. The idea is to congregate around the world's historic dramas the prime agents of civilization; thus here are assembled allegoric figures of Architecture and other arts, of Science and other kingdoms of knowledge, together with lawgivers from the time of Moses

Moses

Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...

, not forgetting Frederick the Great. The chosen situation for this imposing didactic and theatric display is the Treppenhaus or grand staircase in the new museum, Berlin; the surface is a granulated, absorbent wall, specially prepared; the technical method is that known as "water-glass," or "liquid flint," the infusion of silica securing permanence. The same medium was adopted in the later wall-pictures in the Houses of Parliament

Palace of Westminster

The Palace of Westminster, also known as the Houses of Parliament or Westminster Palace, is the meeting place of the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom—the House of Lords and the House of Commons...

, Westminster.

His perspicuous and showy manner also gained him abundant occupation as a book illustrator: in the pages of the poets his fancy revelled. Among his engraved designs are the Shakespeare gallery, the Goethe gallery and a folio edition of the Gospels. With regard to these examples of the Munich school, it was asserted that Kaulbach had been unfortunate alike in having found Cornelius for a master and King Louis for a patron, that he attempted subjects far beyond him, believing that his admiration for them was the same as inspiration; and supplied the lack of real imagination by “a compound of intellect and fancy.” Nevertheless in such compositions as the “Destruction of Jerusalem” and the “Battle of the Huns” Kaulbach shows creative imagination. As a dramatic poet he tells the story, depicts character, seizes on action and situation, and thus as it were takes the spectator by storm. The manner may be occasionally noisy and ranting, but the effect after its kind is tremendous. The cartoon, which, as usual in modern German art, is superior to the ultimate picture, was executed in the artist's prime at the age of thirty. At this period, as here seen, the knowledge was little short of absolute; subtle is the sense of beauty; playful, delicate, firm the touch; the whole treatment artistic.

Late work

The painter's last period brings no new departure; his ultimate works stand conspicuous by exaggerations of early characteristics. The series of designs illustrative of Goethe, which had an immense success, were melodramatic and pandered to popular taste. The vast canvas, more than 30 ft. long, the Sea Fight at Salamis, painted for the Maximilianeum, Munich, evinces wonted imagination and facility in composition; the handling also retains its largeness and vigour; but in this astounding scenic uproar moderation and the simplicity of nature are thrown to the winds, and the whole atmosphere is hot and feverish.

His fervent Protestantism

Protestantism

Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...

, which alienated him in the latter part of his life from Cornelius, who was as decided a Catholic

Catholic

The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

, is most strongly expressed in his “Don Pedro de Arbuez, the Inquisitor,” which, appearing at the time of the ecumenical council (1869-70)

First Vatican Council

The First Vatican Council was convoked by Pope Pius IX on 29 June 1868, after a period of planning and preparation that began on 6 December 1864. This twentieth ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church, held three centuries after the Council of Trent, opened on 8 December 1869 and adjourned...

, produced a great sensation, and gave rise to many controversies. Shortly hefore his death he was at work upon a large cartoon of “The Deluge;” and he had finished his “St. Michael, the Patron Saint of Germany,” in the garb of a heavenly messenger with a radiant air of triumph, and with Napoleon III and his son and several Jesuits cowering at his feet.

A trace has shown that he lived at Obere Garten Gasse 16½ in Munich around 1850. He is buried in the Alter Südfriedhof

Alter Südfriedhof

The Alter Südfriedhof is a cemetery in Munich, Germany. It was founded by Duke Albrecht V as a plague cemetery in 1563 about half a kilometer south of the Sendlinger Gate between Thalkirchner and Pestalozzistraße.-History:...

in Munich. His son Hermann (1846–1909) also became a distinguished painter.

Evaluation

Kaulbach's was a beauty-loving art. He is not supreme as a colorist; he belongs in fact to a school that holds color in subordination; but he laid, in common with the great masters, the sure foundation of his art in form and composition. Indeed, the science of composition has seldom if ever been so clearly understood or worked out with equal complexity and exactitude; the constituent lines, the relation of the parts to the whole, are brought into absolute agreement; in modern Germany painting and music have trodden parallel paths, and Kaulbach is musical in the melody and harmony of his compositions. His narrative too is lucid, and moves as a stately march or royal triumph; the sequence of the figures is unbroken; the arrangement of the groups accords with even literary form; the picture falls into incident, episode, dialogue, action, plot, as a drama.

The style is eclectic; in the Age of Homer the types and the treatment are derived from Greek marbles and vases; then in the Tower of Babel the severity of the antique gives place to the suavity of the Italian renaissance; while in the Crusades the composition is let loose into modern romanticism, and so the manner descends into the midst of the 20th century. And yet this scholastically compounded art is so nicely adjusted and smoothly blended that it casts off all incongruity and becomes homogeneous as the issue of one mind. But a fickle public craved for change; and so the great master in later years waned in favor, and had to witness, not without inquietude, the rise of an opposing party of naturalism and realism. He is perhaps best known for his unusual representation of death, destruction and madness.